As the nation’s capital booms, poor tenants face eviction over as little as $25

Brookland Manor’s proposed eviction of Brittany Gray over an amount many Washingtonians spend on a weekday lunch illustrates the ongoing drama of gentrification in a city and a nation still coming to terms with its consequences.
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(District of Columbia)

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Since the autumn of 2014, developers have announced plans to bring thousands of additional residential units and several hundred thousand square feet of retail space to Rhode Island Avenue in Northeast Washington. Cranes now rise beside car-repair shops and liquor stores that have operated in this historically black community for decades.

One of the projects will remake Brookland Manor, a mammoth apartment complex housing about 1,200 mostly low-income tenants that sprawls across 18 acres on the border between the Brookland and Brentwood neighborhoods. Out will go the large, cheap units designed for big families. And in will come leafy parks, retail space and smaller, expensive apartments luring wealthier families.

But as it seeks to transform the property from an aging husk of the city’s past into an archetype of its future, the owner has increased efforts to evict poor tenants.